David Batty and agencies
Monday November 12, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Thousands of birds are to be culled after an outbreak of bird flu at a Suffolk poultry farm. Photograph: Fernando Vergara/AP
Five thousand birds are to be slaughtered at a farm in Suffolk, east England, following an outbreak of bird flu, the government said today.
Turkeys on the farm near Diss, on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk, had the H5 strain of bird flu, according to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Further tests are being carried out to see whether the birds had the H5N1 strain of the virus, which has killed 205 people since 2003 - mainly in Asia. The infected farm also houses ducks and geese, which will also be slaughtered.
A 3km protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone have been set up around the infected farm. Inside these zones bird movements will be restricted and all birds must be housed or otherwise isolated from contact with wild birds.
The government's deputy chief veterinary officer, Fred Landeg, said the cause of the infection was not yet known and urged all poultry farmers to be vigilant.
He told Sky News: "Everybody needs to be concerned, this is avian influenza. We are asking every poultry keeper to be vigilant, to house their birds where they are required to do so in any restricted area and carry out good biosecurity measures and report any signs of disease."
Landeg said the investigation into the outbreak, which is in its early stages, would try to establish its origin.
He said: "We will be looking at the movements on to the premises and off the premises of birds and movements of people, vehicles and things, to see whether there is another origin somewhere in the country or whether the disease could have spread."
Officers from the Animal Health agency will be checking other farms within the protection zone to see whether their birds are also affected.
Landeg played down the likelihood of a link to the outbreak in February this year at a Bernard Matthews farm in Holton, Suffolk.
It was too early to tell whether there was any significance to be drawn from the proximity of the February outbreak and the latest outbreak, the official added.
He said: "We think that this is a new introduction onto this premises and we will be looking at any possible links to establish where it may have come from and where it might have spread to."
Waterfowl, ducks, swans and geese have previously been infected. But death from H5N1 has also been reported in crows, ravens, thrushes, starlings, sparrows, pigeons, doves, hawks, falcons, eagles and owls. Dogs and cats have also been infected.
In the vast majority of H5N1 cases worldwide victims have fallen ill after having prolonged and close contact with infected birds, either through keeping poultry domestically or butchering them. There is limited evidence that the virus has spread between humans.
The virus is fragile and easily destroyed by cooking, so it is almost impossible to catch from cooked meat, according to the Food Standards Agency.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) cautioned against the assumption that the disease had spread to poultry from wild birds.
The autumn migration was largely over, and no wild birds had been found with avian flu in Europe since late August, a spokesman said.
"Last time people went on a mad whirl of speculation on how wild birds had moved the virus and it turned out not to be the case," he said. "How it got into this farm needs to be a matter of urgent scrutiny."
A report by Defra into the outbreak on a Bernard Matthews farm earlier this year found that imported turkey meat from Hungary, and not wild birds, was the most likely source of the disease in that case.
The RSPB carried out monitoring of wild birds on its sites and there had been no cases of bird flu in the past three years, the spokesman said.
The Conservative shadow environment secretary, Peter Ainsworth, said: "This is yet another nightmare for the farming community and we can only hope that this is an isolated case.
"Farmers have endured so much this year, the last thing they need is an outbreak of bird flu in the run-up to Christmas."
The Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Another outbreak of bird flu after the Bernard Matthews incident makes it a hat-trick of horror stories for British farming this year: foot and mouth, bluetongue and now bird flu again.
"Ministers must pull out all the stops to contain this outbreak and identify its source. Despite the discovery of serious failings in procedures during the last outbreak at Bernard Matthews, no one was prosecuted. Let us hope that the same sort of mistakes have not been made here."
The National Farmers Union reassured the public that the cull would not lead to a shortage of turkeys for Christmas, as they accounted for a tiny fraction of the 10 million birds bought for the festive season.
The NFU president Peter Kendall said the outbreak was "another huge blow to the farming industry", which was still dealing with the effects of bluetongue and foot and mouth.
He said: "We fully support the measures Defra have put in place in the protection and surveillance zones and we will be working with them to make sure producers within the zones understand the implications of the restrictions.
"But it is important to remember avian influenza is a disease of birds. There is no reason for public concern and the Food Standards Agency says there are no risks from eating poultry meat and eggs provided they are cooked properly as, of course, all food should be."
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